In the 6th century B.C., there was a man known as Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu was one of the first Chinese realists, and excelled in the topic of military strategy. He authored an ancient work known as The Art of War, which tells of the most efficient military tactics and provides insight on martial strategies. The topics and subjects in this work aren’t just limited to war alone, and can be applied to many fields. Below, I will take an excerpt(s) of his work and try my best to apply it to Magic: The Gathering.

“In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment, or a company entire than to destroy them.

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” – Sun Tzu

This excerpt can easily be translated into Magical terms, because it refers to similar objects and items. A country can be thought of as the entire of your opponent’s permanents; their lands, their creatures, and their enchantments. A regiment, detachment, or company can be thought of as only a certain portion of this total.

In the game of Magic: The Gathering, there are usually four ways to rid your opponents of their permanents. They are: To make your opponent discard them; To make them put that permanent into their graveyard; To make them remove that permanent from play; or to take control of that permanent for yourself.

By reviewing the excerpt above, we can easily see that the last choice is the most ideal. Why destroy a permanent, when you are able to take it for yourself? In most cases, when taking control of a permanent, you are gaining more advantage than when you are destroying that same permanent. For example, if Player A was to use Stone Rain on one of Player B’s lands, both players would gain nor receive any card advantage. (Of course, Player A is bound to receive some type of Tempo Advantage in this interaction.) In contrast, if Player A, instead, decides to use Annex on Player B’s land, he has just gained 1 card advantage. This is because he has used one card as an answer (Annex), and in turn, gained another (Player B’s Land). He has also gained two times as much tempo as he would of in the last interaction. Player A is now able to use his opponent’s resource for his own needs, whereas, before, he would have just destroyed it.

The same idea is true with creatures. For example, you are playing a U/B Control Variant. Your opponent has just cast a game-winning beater. What would be more beneficial to you: To use spot destruction and put that fatty to the graveyard once and for all? Or instead, to use the Confiscate in your hand to take control of that same fatty and use him to your advantage?

The latter would be the wisest choice in most cases, because your opponent still can’t use the creature. And you now have possession of it, instead of it lying dully in your opponent’s graveyard. You have gained more advantage on your opponent by making this choice instead of the other. And the more advantages you have on your opponent, the easier you will find it to win.

A certain deck in Standard is particularly good at following the concept that has been explained above. This deck is Eminent Domain which was piloted to first place by Adrian Sullivan in Wisconsin during States. Here is the decklist he used:

As is visible, the deck excels in the category of Control Magic. Sullivan is able to use Annex to take hold of his opponents’ lands, in order to power him into one of his finishing Dragons. And if he can’t find one of those Dragons, he is able to steal one of his opponent’s finishers by using an Icy Manipulator in collaboration with Dream Leash. This grants him access to any one of his opponent’s threats. And, finally, if the going gets tough, he can use the synergy hidden within Miren, the Moaning Well and Keiga, the Tide Star to gain five life and capture one of his opponents finishers.

But Sullivan’s deck does go against the policy in one way. And that way is in using the card, Wildfire. Wildfire is designed only to destroy lands, not to capture them. Sullivan’s intention for this card is to rid the opponent of their creatures with 4 or less toughness, along with making them sacrifice four of their lands. In addition, with the Annexes, Adrian can take control of a couple of his opponent’s lands and then power into a Wildfire and sacrifice those same lands. This means that the opponent is actually giving up 5-8 of their lands with Wildfire, instead of the regular 4. The concept of using your opponent’s resources is still there, in Adrian using his opponent’s land to lead him into a finisher (Wildfire). But the finisher, itself, goes against this concept entirely.

Overall, this deck does represent the concepts of “Thievery” and Control Magic quite well. It uses its opponent’s resources and threats to its own advantage, and wins with its opponent’s materials. What could be better than killing an opponent with their own weapons?

Although, this concept is generally a sensible guide to helping you achieve victory, there can be a few exceptions. Some of these include:

1.) When you are gaining little to no advantage by taking over an opponent’s permanent, or when you are losing advantage through the interaction.

For example, if your opponent is using a Heartbeat of Spring, and you take control of it, it is still benefiting both players the same as it did before. Enchantments that have an effect that is unchanged by who has possession of them are an exception to this rule. Another example is a creature with a drawback. If you have low life already, it is generally a bad idea to take control of a creature that has a life drawback (such as Moroii); unless you know you can win the game with it.

2.) When you have Destruction answers, but no immediate Control Magic answers.

You almost never want to wait for another answer when you have one available, and your opponent has a game-winning threat on the board. Use that destruction spell to rid your opponent of their threat. By the time you wait for a Control Magic answer, you could have already lost the game. It would be very foolish to lose the game when you already had an answer to the threat, but were waiting to find a better one. Just as it would be foolish to not win a game using your smaller creatures because you were trying to find a bigger, badder one.

3.) When your opponent is playing Blue.

Now, this may seem a little generalized and it may seem like I’m stereotyping, but, normally, the rules change when the opposing player is piloting Blue. Seeing as Blue has a lot of Control Magic and other spells that will make this concept obsolete, you will want to be on-guard when facing a blue mage. For example, if you take control of your opponent’s Meloku with a Confiscate, the blue mage might just as easily be able to lay down a Confiscate of their own, on top of yours. Or they could use a Boomerang to return the Meloku back to their hand; in which case, you have just wasted a Confiscate. This does mean that you have possibly distracted them from their overall goal. But in most cases, one sole distraction will not be the decider of games.

Now, let’s move on to the latter part of the excerpt…

“Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” – Sun Tzu

We don’t really need to switch this to Magic terms to understand the meaning behind it. If you have to fight hard to win every game, you are not as great as someone who can triumph every game with ease. And the way the second player is able to win more easily, is by reducing the amount of enemy resistance.

Above, I’ve explained some of the strategies to reduce the amount of resistance. But there are many other techniques, besides destruction and control magic, which will assist you, if you choose to utilize them. One of these techniques is not allowing your opponent to untap their permanents.

One of the best instances of a deck built around this idea has to be Stasis. This deck would lay out a Stasis and Kismet, and keep the opponent from untapping anything. Then it would mill the opponent for the win. Some of the current cards that are based off this concept are Exhaustion and Storage Matrix. Both of these cards keep the opponent from untapping certain types of permanents, and in turn, break some of the resistance that the opponent would normally put up. If you can keep your opponent’s creatures tapped down, while you are attacking with yours, you have broken the enemy’s resistance to an extent, and are allowing yourself to fight less intensely. In this way, you are risking fewer casualties and are achieving a higher goal than someone fighting tooth and nail for the victory.

The same philosophy holds true when you don’t allow your opponent’s lands to untap. Without lands to produce mana, you are not allowing your opponent to play spells or creatures from their hand. And while you are not directly removing resistance from the board, you are preventing additional resistance from entering play. You will still benefit from this prevention in the same way, meaning you won’t have to struggle as much to win the match-up.

Another very popular concept that plays a role in this breaking of an enemy’s resistance is Evasion. Evasion comes in a variety of forms, but the most notable are Flying, Protection, Unblockability, and Untargetability. Flying allows your creatures to be blocked only by other flying creatures. This means you will be able to deal damage to your opponent more easily than you’d normally be able to, since only a small portion of creatures have flying. Mike Flores once talked about this concept and why’d he choose Suntail Hawk over Savannah Lions, even though the Lions have a greater power. He put it simply like this:

“Because fighting is for suckers.” – Mike Flores

vs.

[I'd play the Lions... just because I like the art better. *grin*  ~Streetz~]

And he was correct in making this statement because of the simple principle that you should focus more towards winning by breaking your opponent’s resistance, rather than winning through fighting harder. When you are playing flyers, you’ve just broken a lot of resistance because your opponent can no longer block that attacker with their ground troops. Unblockability functions in the exact same manner. You are using a creature that cannot be blocked, and in turn, are breaking through your opponent’s resistance and winning more easily.

Protection and Untargetability function a little differently than Flying and Unblockability. While Protection still makes it so that a creature can’t be blocked by a color(s) that it’s protected from, it also guarantees that the creature can’t be targeted by spells or abilities of that color, can’t be enchanted by that color, and can’t be dealt damage from a source of that color. This means that your opponent only has a limited number of ways to deal with that creature. This, in turn, means that you have effectively reduced the amount of resistance that your opponent will throw at you. Untargetability means a creature can’t be targeted by spells or abilities. Again, when your opponent is not able to place resistance upon your creatures, you are able to succeed more easily.

Hopefully, the paragraphs above have helped explain the concepts of using your opponents’ resources to your advantage and winning through ease. By focusing on the strategy incorporated into Magic, you will better understand how to become a skilled and successful player. This is merely an article to display a portion of that overall strategy and is intended to help you achieve that goal. Until next time, “Fight smarter, not harder,” and remember the wise words of Sun Tzu, Master of the Art of War.

~ FIRE REIGN 2

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